This recent shoot for the children’s cancer charity, Young Lives vs Cancer, was a fun day out at Wimbledon Park Athletics track.
Using four character models from Uglies and a couple of client volunteers, we set about shooting a suite of images to be used in fundraising promotions.
I have worked for this fantastic charity, previously called CLIC Sargent, for over 15 years. Over this period, the photography style has changed a number of times, and luckily, I’ve been asked to stay on board and help develop and refine each of these changes.
About five years ago, as part of a brand overhaul, the photography style changed radically from a storytelling reportage approach to a stylised studio portrait look.
Earlier this year, Senior Creative Director Bryan Meredith wanted to take this strong lighting style and apply it to some location scenarios to illustrate individuals’ personal stories.
Photographically, this shoot was a continuation of that journey.
The original brief for this board photography was to shoot a set of portraits set against different abstract architectural backgrounds within the Broadgate Estate.
Each director will be positioned within a location that has a distinctive architectural feature. The images will be used with a tight crop, so there should be distinct background interest close to the directors’ head and shoulders. The primary format is to be landscape.
The head and shoulders will be the focus, with the subject looking off-camera. A variety of expressions should be captured but not too smiley.
We organised a half-day recce with the art director and client, from which I produced a recce report outlining the best possible areas and available light ideas of what the portraits would look like. The art director wanted to have both the subject and background in focus. So although I knew we would have to deploy additional lighting, I was also aware that we had to be able to pack down and reset in a completely different location within 15 to 20 of each other. I decided to base my lighting around my Profoto B10 and B10 plus kits and to use the 3′ Gridded Octa as my main light source and umbrella’s as any secondary lighting. The final part of the jigsaw was to organise shooting the directors so that they appeared in different locations for each of the three-page spreads and make that work given the timetable we had to work to. The one bit of good fortune was that we had 30 mins with each person, giving me time to work with each individual and understand and express their personality. Although the original brief was to shoot everyone looking off-camera, a last-minute request asked me to shoot a few shots of everyone looking at camera… just in case. In the end, the client reverted to having the majority of people looking at camera, which are the selected images below. I still feel that it was a much stronger set with everyone looking off, but hey, I’m just the photographer.
Working with two assistants over two days, we shot the following set of images.
